The Tickles

The Tickles are a tiny race of creatures that feed off of laughter. What happens when they are faced with someone that isn't ticklish? Read on and find out.

Submitted: November 14, 2010

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Submitted: November 14, 2010

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Have you ever wondered how and why you get tickled at random times? Maybe someone had been
tickling you at those times, and those times are easy to explain, but what about the times when there was no one else around? There is a story here, and if you would like, I
could tell it to you. There was a time when the only way you could be tickled was when someone was doing the tickling.

You see, there are these tiny creatures known as Tickles, and the one thing that they want to do is make people
laugh. For years they were able to make everyone that they came upon laugh by running up and down their happy victims sides, along the bottom of their feet, and even the sides of
their neck. Times were good for the Tickles, because they had all the laughter that they could ever possibly need. You see, Tickles feed on laughter, and an
entire group of Tickles can feed on a wild gale of laughter for a full day. Being tiny, invisible, gnome-like creatures, they didn’t need much to keep them busy or to keep them
full; however, they are always looking for new ways to get all of those tasty laughs.

Obviously, different types of laughter have different tastes. Wild fits of laughter taste
quite good, like yummy fruit, and are very filling for Tickles, as I have already said. Random little bursts of laughter, usually when nervous or embarrassed tastes a little like
bread, but they don’t fill up Tickles too well. Polite laughter is really bland tasting, much like medicine, but sometimes the Tickles need this type of laughter when nothing
else is available. Finally, mean and sarcastic laughter is very bitter, and the Tickles don’t even try to feed on this type of laughter because it is really no good for
them. So, just like when you are hungry, the Tickles look for the laughter that tastes the best. This means finding, or making, wild bursts of laughter to feed
on. This was how the Tickles got so good at making people laugh, but after a while, they learned of a strange creature that wasn’t ticklish.

When they heard of this creature, they thought that surely it must be some sort of joke.
Truly, what would be the purpose of a person that couldn’t be tickled? So, in order to prove whether these stories were true or not, a large group of Tickles got together and
went hunting for this elusive creature. They decided that the best course of action was to tickle everyone that they came to, to make sure that they were all ticklish, which
resulted in many happy people wondering what had tickled them. But no matter how fast they looked around, they could never see the Tickles, because being invisible makes it very
difficult to be seen. The Tickles traveled very far in their quest, and time passed. Over the span of this time, the group met up with other Tickles that were
both doubtful and curious as to if such a creature could actually exist. Many new Tickles decided to join the quest, so that with each group of new Tickles that they came in
contact with, their numbers grew. Surely with this army of Tickles, there was no one that could hold back the gales of tasty laughs!

Finally, when the group was about to decide that no such creature existed, they came upon a person that had a
very rough look about them. The Tickles looked at this person wondering where they should start, because you cannot just start tickling anywhere and expect laughter, you had to
know where to start and then go from there. After much thought, they decided to start at the most logical spot: the sides. After all, many of the people that
they had tickled were ticklish at the sides. So the group started the long trek to the sides of the person, since the person was quite tall, at least, as compared to a
Tickle. When the group reached the sides, with half the group on one side, and the other half on the other side, they all counted to three and then started dancing.
After all, when you are being tickled, what you are actually feeling is the Dance of the Tickles. The wilder they dance the more that you laugh, so they are
able to dance very wild, indeed.

However, when they started dancing on this person’s sides, nothing happened. At first, this
didn’t bother the Tickles because they had been up against people that were not ticklish in that spot, so they went to the next best spot, the feet. When they had squeezed into
the shoes and socks and gathered at the usual sensitive spots they started dancing wildly. Nothing happened. This started to worry the Tickles because almost
everyone was ticklish at either their sides or the bottom of their feet. They got together and decided that they had to go up and try the neck, just to be
sure. On the way, many of the Tickles discussed what it would mean if they couldn’t get this person to laugh. After all, they had been dancing quite a lot, and
they were starting to get hungry. Realizing this, the Tickles knew that they had to get a laugh or else they would go hungry. The thought made quite a few of
the Tickles scared.

With this, the group got to the person’s neck and started dancing up and down the length of neck, but with no
laugh, or even any response at all. At this, most of the Tickles started to wonder if this was a real person, of just some sort of fake person put up for some strange
purpose. When they saw the person move its large hand, they relaxed knowing that they were on a real person. However, this still left them with the problem of
being very hungry and having no laughs from which to eat. Most of the Tickles decided to sit down and think on this problem, but there was one Tickle that decided to go
exploring, for this was new territory of a sort. How often would it get to see what a non-ticklish person looked like? Maybe the Tickle could see what kept
this person from laughing. It first looked at the person’s mouth to make sure that it could make sound, and when the Tickle heard the person’s voice talking into a strange
device, it knew that that hadn’t been the problem. Next were the eyes to see if there were any problems there. Making the short trip up the face gained no
results, either. Finally, the Tickle decided to check out the ear, just because it had never been to an ear before and was wondering what it looked like.

Climbing into the ear, the Tickle thought that it looked quite a bit like a theatre with the cup of the ear
being the seats for the audience, and the area above the opening acting as the stage. That way, all the audience could see and hear whoever was on that stage.
Realizing this, the Tickle decided to tell a joke about one of his cousins. The joke was about one of the Fluffs, which were tiny creatures much like Tickles, but instead of
making people laugh, they filled people’s bellybuttons with fluff. Sometimes they would even go out and leave fluff in the person’s hair. This confused the
Tickles, but they knew that tickling people confused the Fluffs, as well. Imagining that it was standing in front of a large audience of Tickles, the Tickle told the story about
his cousin traveling up to leave a piece of fluff in the person’s hair just to find that the person that it was on was bald and that there was no hair in which to plant the fluff.

Finishing the story, the Tickle started laughing while imagining the look on its cousin’s face when it looked
over the shiny head of its person. Laughter, as you know, can be quite contagious, and maybe it was just the laughter, or maybe the person heard the story, but either way, the
person started giggling, and then came a short bark of laughter, then the wild burst of laughter that Tickles find so tasty! They had plenty to feast on now!
Climbing to the bottom of the ear, the Tickle called to all of its fellow Tickles to see what it had found. When they were all settled into the audience area, they each took
turns getting on the stage and telling jokes, stories, or even just making silly sounds. They spent much of the next day stocking up on laughter so that they could make their
journeys home, spreading the news that they could make people laugh by doing other things then just dancing. However dancing was still their favorite thing to do, but it’s not
often that you get to tell everyone something new that will help them.

So, the next time that you think of a funny story or joke, or even a funny sound that makes you laugh, maybe
you have a Tickle in your ear helping you find the laughter in your day. Make sure that it’s good laughter, too, because Tickles get hungry, and it’s only polite to feed your
guests. Especially when they help you make the meal.